The man stayed in there for half an hour or so and then came out with another man and two women. This second man was of about the same age as the first, about five feet eight inches tall, would weigh about a hundred and seventy pounds, had brown hair and eyes, a dark complexion, a flat, broad face with high cheek bones, and wore a blue suit, gray hat, tan overcoat, black shoes, and a pear-shaped pearl tiepin.
One of the women was about twenty-two years old, small, slender and blonde. The other was probably three or four years older, red-haired, medium in height and build, with a turned-up nose.
The quartet had got in the car and gone to the Algerian Café, where they had stayed until a little after one in the morning. Then they had returned to the Futurity Apartments. At half-past three the two men had left, driving the Buick to a garage in Post Street, and then walking to the Mars Hotel.
When I had finished reading this I called Mickey Linehan in from the operatives’ room, gave him the report and instructions:
“Find out who these folks are.”
Mickey went out. My phone rang.
Bruno Gungen: “Good morning. May you have something to tell me today?”
“Maybe,” I said. “You’re downtown?”
“Yes, in my shop. I shall be here until four.”
“Right. I’ll be in to see you this afternoon.”
At noon Mickey Linehan returned. “The first bloke,” he reported, “the one Dick saw with the girl, is named Benjamin Weel. He owns the Buick and lives in the Mars—room 410. He’s a salesman, though it’s not known what of. The other man is a friend of his who has been staying with him for a couple of days. I couldn’t get anything on him. He’s not registered. The two women in the Futurity are a couple of hustlers. They live in apartment 303. The larger one goes by the name of Mrs. Effie Roberts. The little blonde is Violet Evarts.”
“Wait,” I told Mickey, and went back into the file room, to the index-card drawers.
I ran through the W’s—“Weel, Benjamin, alias Coughing Ben, 36,312W.”
The contents of folder No. 36,312W told me that Coughing Ben Weel had been arrested in Amador County in 1916 on a highgrading charge and had been sent to San Quentin for three years. In 1922 he had been picked up again in Los Angeles and charged with trying to blackmail a movie actress, but the case had fallen through. His description fit the one Dick had given of the man in the Buick. His photograph—a copy of the one taken by the Los Angeles police in ’22—showed a sharp-featured young man with a chin like a wedge.
I took the photo back to my office and showed it to Mickey.
“This is Weel five years ago. Follow him around a while.”
When the operative had gone I called the police detective bureau. Neither Hacken nor Begg was in. I got hold of Lewis, in the identification department.
“What does Bunky Dahl look like?” I asked him.
“Wait a minute,” Lewis said, and then: “32, 67½, 174, medium, brown, brown, broad flat face with prominent cheekbones, gold bridge work in lower left jaw, brown mole under right ear, deformed little toe on right foot.”
“Have you a picture of him to spare?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, I’ll send a boy down for it.”
I told Tommy Howd to go down and get it, and then went out for some food. After luncheon I went up to Gungen’s establishment in Post Street. The little dealer was gaudier than ever this afternoon in a black coat that was even more padded in the shoulders and tighter in the waist than his dinner coat had been the other night, striped gray pants, a vest that leaned toward magenta, and a billowy satin tie wonderfully embroidered with gold thread.
We went back through his store, up a narrow flight of stairs to a small cube of an office on the mezzanine floor.
“And now you have to tell me?” he asked when we were seated, with the door closed.
“I’ve got more to ask than tell. First, who is the girl with the thick nose, the thick lower lip, and the pouches under grey eyes, who lives in your house?”
“That is one Rose Rubury.” His little painted face was wrinkled in a satisfied smile. “She is my dear wife’s maid.”
“She goes riding with an ex-convict.”
“She does?” He stroked his dyed goatee with a pink hand, highly pleased. “Well, she is my dear wife’s maid, that she is.”
“Main didn’t drive up from Los Angeles with a friend, as he told his wife. He came up on the train Saturday night—so he was in town twelve hours before he showed up at home.”
Bruno Gungen giggled, cocking his delighted face to one side.
“Ah!” he tittered. “We progress! We progress! Is it not so?”
“Maybe. Do you remember if this Rose Rubury was in the house on Sunday night—say from eleven to twelve?”
“I do remember. She was. I know it certainly. My dear wife was not feeling well that night. My darling had gone out early that Sunday morning, saying she was going to drive out into the country with some friends—what friends I do not know. But she came home at eight o’clock that night complaining of a distressing headache. I was quite frightened by her appearance, so that I went often to see how she was, and thus it happens that I know her maid was in the house all of that night, until one o’clock, at least.”
“Did the police show you the handkerchief they found with Main’s wallet?”
“Yes.” He squirmed on the edge of his chair, his face like the face of a kid looking at a Christmas tree.
“You’re sure it’s your wife’s?”
His giggle interfered with his speech, so he said, “Yes,” by shaking his head up and down until the
